Promoting Engaged and Active Learning in Electrical Engineering through Collaborative Online Lab Experiences

This project will serve the national interest by improving student learning in undergraduate engineering courses. Specifically, it will implement active learning strategies to increase the quality of online electrical engineering laboratories. In response to the pandemic, online learning became the new norm. However, many challenges remain that must be solved to ensure that students are engaged online and have hands-on learning experiences. Solving these challenges is especially pronounced in engineering because of the critical role that experiential learning in laboratories holds in engineering education. This project will investigate the effectiveness of collaborative online lab experiences for electrical engineering majors in an institution in which 60% of the student population are first generation college students. Thus, by increasing the effectiveness of online learning at the institution, the project has the potential to help mitigate the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on students from communities with higher levels of poverty. The project aims to improve student learning in online labs by integrating open-ended design experiences, facilitating teamwork, creating online learning communities to overcome feelings of isolation, and incorporating pre-lab simulations and video demonstrations.

The goals of this project are: 1) to develop and implement high-impact online lab teaching practices that contribute to improving online STEM education; 2) to overcome students' feelings of isolation in virtual labs; 3) to instill self-reliance, student engagement, and confidence through virtual labs; and 4) to use the knowledge and expertise gained from the project to develop an online experiment bank and make it available to the public through websites, workshops and publications. The modular format of the labs along with their portability and low hardware cost will help make the enhanced online labs and associated strategies easily adaptable at other institutions and in other disciplines. In addition to the lab designed for higher education institutions, the project will also develop a separate lab for middle and high school students, with several K-12 STEM teachers involved in the lab's development. In this way, the project aims to design online labs that provide rich learning experiences, not only for electrical engineering students, but also for K-12 students and teachers. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.